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Tag: radiology

I had my x-ray appointment a couple of weeks ago. It seemed to go much more easily than previous urethrograms; having a suprapubic catheter makes it much easier to fill the bladder with contrast. Unfortunately it turns out that the urologist had only ordered a voiding cystourethrogram and not a retrograde one.

Cystourethrogram showing my urethra almost completely blocked

That meant that there was too little flow after the stricture to fill the urethra. The radiologist initially concluded that there was a huge stricture all the way from the inner end of the graft right to the meatus. They looked at the pictures again, together with the urologists, and decided that instead it’s two very narrow strictures with about 5 mm between them.

Of course, it’s impossible to tell how long the outer stricture is, or anything else about the urethra after that point.

I’ve been communicating with one of the urologists by email and he seems oddly resistant to the idea of doing a retrograde cystourethrogram. The current delaying tactic is to ask a colleague in another county for advice. That of course means letters going back and forth in the post, so it’ll be at least another week before they hear back from him.

So it seems I’ll be stuck with the suprapubic catheter for quite a while longer. There’s basically no chance of getting anything useful done before Christmas now.

Here’s an animation from the cystourethrogram. You can clearly see how the urethra upstream of the stricture gets stretched by the pressure and how long it takes for the urine/contrast to get past the stricture.

The radiology staff didn’t seem especially familiar with the procedure, so even with a large crowd coming and going and giving advice it took over an hour. They seemed to have used too much numbing gel; every time they tried to inject the contrast the catheter would pop out.

The RCUG was eventually successful but the VCUG didn’t work so well. I found it very difficult to urinate on demand while lying on my side and having not had anything to drink for a couple of hours.

My x-ray appointment was at the end of January but I couldn’t get an appointment with the urologist until mid-March, partly because I was away quite a lot during those months.

When I finally saw the urologist he was the first doctor I’d met in the urology department with any bedside manner and he was very open to discussing the options.

I’d used the time before the appointment to continue my research and I’d found that in the few studies that actually tried to evaluate patient satisfaction buccal mucosal graft (using skin from the inside of the mouth) did better than penile flap (using skin from the penis) urethroplasty. It seems that the cosmetic results are better, there are fewer problems with skin tightness and less post-urination dribbling with the buccal mucosal graft.

The doctor would have preferred to use a penile flap and was more familiar with the technique. I had an especially awkward moment lying exposed on the examining table when he told me that there seemed to be plenty of spare skin and I had to try to explain that that’s not the case when my penis is erect.

He’d already discussed my case with a colleague in another county who had more experience with buccal mucosal grafts and we agreed that we’d go for that option and that he’d bring in his colleague to assist with the surgery.